Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Stanford University raised $6.2
billion, the most ever for any university, in a five-year
campaign that concluded Dec. 31.

The Stanford Challenge officially started in October 2006
with a goal of $4.3 billion, according to a statement today from
the university, near Palo Alto, California. The total includes
$2.19 billion that Stanford raised before the campaign began,
said Lisa Lapin, a university spokeswoman, in an e-mail.

Stanford received 23 gifts of at least $50 million. These
included $105 million from Philip Knight, founder of Nike Inc.,
mainly for a new business school campus; and $75 million, mostly
for a energy and science building, from Jerry Yang, co-founder
of Yahoo! Inc., and his wife. The university received more than
560,000 donations from more than 166,000 donors.

“The response from the extended Stanford family was
tremendous,” President John Hennessy said in the statement.
“This was a community joining together for something they
believed in.”

The donations have funded more than 130 new faculty
positions, more than $250 million in undergraduate scholarships,
and 38 new or renovated buildings.

Stanford’s fundraising total surpassed the previous record
for a concluded campaign of $3.88 billion raised by Yale
University in a five-year campaign that ended June 30, according
to Pam Russell, a spokeswoman at the Council for Advancement &
Support of Education, a nonprofit in Washington. Columbia
University raised $4.3 billion by the end of June toward a $5
billion campaign, according to the university’s website.

Stanford’s endowment was valued at $16.5 billion on June
30, according to the National Association of College &
University Business Officers, another Washington nonprofit.